MYTH: Palestinian-Arab Leaders Recognize the Horrors of the Holocaust

President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority not only refuses to recognize the horrors of the Holocaust (like the crematorium pictured above), but it also calls for another one (photo credit: Wikipedia Commons, Marcin Białek)

FACT: Throughout the Middle East, political leaders and public figures routinely deny the Holocaust. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas wrote his dissertation on the (fake) collaboration of Zionists and Nazis, falsely claiming that the Zionists were Hitler’s “basic partner in crime” and asserting that the numbers of those killed were deeply exaggerated. He reaffirmed this view in a televised interview in 2013.

Carrying this through the education system, PA textbooks detail WWII but purposely omit the extermination of 6 million Jews. This is no surprise, given the views of those inside the PA. Fatah leader Hatem Abd al-Qader said that education about the “so-called Holocaust” is “a great danger to the developing [of] Palestinian mentality”. Similarly, Hamas-backed cleric Younis al-Astal believes that Holocaust education should be considered a war crime.

Moreover, the PA’s Chairman of the Education Committee stated that PA schools should teach that the Holocaust was significantly “inflated,” and that the Palestinian-Arabs “were forced to live with the results.” When a professor at Al-Quds University took a group of students to Auschwitz in 2014, his colleagues chastised him for spreading “lies and fabrications,” pressuring him to resign.

Not only do Palestinian-Arab leaders deny the Holocaust, but they also call for another one. PA and Hamas leaders regularly use their media outlets, mosques, and schools to teach children to advocate for the genocide of the Jewish people. They also name schools, streets, and summer camps after terrorists that seek to achieve this goal by murdering Jewish civilians.